This is not what I chose,
You made this murderer of me.
You strove to crush this small
and choiceless hand in your grip
You smiled, I skipped; voiceless,
quick and all the while mute and blind
The stone cold soul behind your grin,
Thin grimacing lips hid invisible whips
and killer ties to bind these wrists.
This is not what I chose
You made this murderer of me.
I can’t say how or why it has come to this, or even how I have come to this. I’m not sure if the void, or the thing that I think is the void, has come from the outside in to fill me up, or if, slowly, everything inside has just trickled away, over time; away, and out of me. I don’t know which way it went, or if something came and took it. I feel like I will never know, and, I suppose, it doesn’t really matter.
It’s like I am watching myself from somewhere outside but still somehow attached, by some link that’s fraying and taut, about to snap. It’s like somewhere inside there is a part that holds onto a sense of crisp clarity. That part observes the strained link vividly and watches on while another part, the largest part, the part that is covered and suffocating in the mist. Part living. Part dying. Looking over the slowly deadening part while I watch it die.
I don’t know how else to describe it aside from that way. I can’t think of a clearer way to tell it to you.
Time is shooting by. Months pass; days mingle in, one to the empty next. It’s all undefined. Spiralling. Happening without me being a part of them. I am happening without being part of myself, like I’m not a part of myself, or in myself; moving further and further away from what I recognise. I don’t think my grip could be called a grip any longer. My hand is there, in the right position, reaching out and grasping as one would expect for one wanting to hold onto their life, and themselves. But it’s just there, looking like there should be something just out of its range, but it can’t quite be seen. It holds nothing. It reaches to nothing but craves for an object, and idea, some truth. No matter how much I grab, the flexing and straining amounts to nothing. I cannot reach the life that’s drifting away.
This is useless. Every metaphor I draw for doesn’t cover it. They just don’t fit. Perhaps a combination would suffice but there is no use in me delivering one after the other in an attempt to make you understand what I cannot understand myself. I’m not even sure where I am going with this, but I know it is somewhere. It has to be somewhere. I have to be going somewhere, right? Aren’t we all? Even if we can’t see where that place is, even if we have no control over how we get there, or when we arrive.
Shade and shame covered her as she stood staring down at the hole in the ground that now housed her mother. Had it not been for the unused tissue providing a barrier between nail and skin, she would have bled from the force of her clenched fist. There were no tears here just a stern pale straight face staring downward, wondering whether she would ever feel full up with enough satisfaction to walk away.
A bird had been watching from the high branches of the old oak that sheltered her but she had not noticed as the dark angles of him had danced along above. The tree shaded them both from the afternoon sun of that day so thick was its maturity that dappled light could only be found at the periphery of its shadow. She had hoped for heavy rain and fast winds to mark the occasion, yet none came, only a bright stillness was in attendance that brought nothing that the dead woman did not deserve.
She had dreamt of this day many times, and each time the scene came to her in her sleep, it had been raining hard with an aerial view that presented sharp black and obedient umbrellas in a neat row boxed around the hole. In the first dream, she had seen the bird swooping across her vision, and in all of the other dreams that followed if it did not come to her, she had scanned the treetops, and traced her mind along the stony outline of the church in the distance to seek it out. He was the only guest she cared to notice but he was not a mourner and he only wore his textured black suit through obligation and no choice of his own. He did not pay respects, or forget all the bad things she had done, he just danced from branch to branch in the old oak, or skimmed on the breezes that blew through the cemetery.
Outside of the girl, nature knew nothing of the storm within her and bore no reflection of it. She made no change to it but for her weight channeled into the earth through the small soles of small shoes. No noise came from her to change the sounds, no movement was made to disrupt the air there, save the regular deep breaths that came from her. Petite and perfectly still, she did not hear the mourners voices carry from where they stood, chattering among themselves, waiting for her in clusters. She did not register the crunching of gravel under the tyres of a shiny new hearse full up with the next body moving slowly around the crematorium. Her being, connected to only the ground beneath her feet and the intensity of her fixed gaze, quietly celebrated the death of her mother.
It was the colour of the kingfisher that I recalled most clearly:
the grainy blue-green hue imperfectly contained in frayed lead lines.
It came to mind when they returned its weight to me:
some swooping bright image, perched on a river-side stump.
And I thought of your bones, and this book:
all I had of you, heavier than the bones of you,
but really only just a papery ghost of you.
I soon felt the true meaning:
The only meeting place we’d ever had
was at the page where the blue-green
bird was sat.
Hour’s up.
That’s it.
Time’s over.
Shifting bones rise from dents in the sofa.
Remember where you are?
Then call back all those released
thought beasts, back to the cage.
Peel them away from the walls,
present and bold as before; restored.
Take back their freedom,
and slam the cage door.
Authorial Intentions 